Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan sang about a “Million Dollar Bash” on his celebrated “Basement Tapes” recordings, and that’s nearly what the 2015 Newport Folk Festival became over the weekend during a 50th anniversary salute to Dylan’s historic 1965 performance. In addition to performances by various artists of songs Dylan sang when he famously “went electric” at Newport, R.I., guitarist and songwriter Taylor Goldsmith of Los Angeles indie rock band Dawes got to strap on the Fender Stratocaster that Dylan played the day he fully transitioned from acoustic folkie to newly electrified rocker. The cheers and boos Dylan received that day have been debated...

The final verse of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 1974 hit single “Sweet Home Alabama” — “Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers / and they've been known to pick a song or two” — probably confused generations of pre-Wikipedia radio listeners.
Swampers? Muscle Shoals? Both...

Bob Dylan sang about a “Million Dollar Bash” on his celebrated “Basement Tapes” recordings, and that’s nearly what the 2015 Newport Folk Festival became over the weekend during a 50th anniversary salute to Dylan’s historic 1965 performance.
In addition...

The guitar that Bob Dylan used to go electric at the Newport Folk Festival 50 years ago is back in Newport. "Dylan's guitar is home," festival producer Jay Sweet said through a spokeswoman Friday, the opening day of this year's three-day outdoor...

The playlists are the thing. Since music became digital, devalued, and shareable a transformation expertly detailed in Stephen Witt's new book, "How Music Got Free" there's no shortage of the stuff. It used to take a lifetime to...

On the night of July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan strode onto a stage at the Newport Folk Festival, plugged in an electric guitar and gave the music world a shock. Wearing a black leather jacket, the darling of the folk movement and singer of protest songs...

A vacation trip to see the World's Fair in New York changed the orbit of popular music in Nashville. In August 1965, Nashville session player Charlie McCoy was in New York on that trip when Bob Johnston invited him to play acoustic guitar on a session...

When he was still known as Donald L. Lee, the poet-publisher-teacher-writer-activist Haki Madhubuti sold copies of his first book, a poetry collection titled "Think Black," on the corner of 63rd St. and Cottage Grove Ave. on the city's South...

Bill Murray, a frequent "Late Show" guest, managed to top himself on Tuesday's episode -- with frosting.
Murray jumped out of a cake to celebrate David Letterman's retirement from late-night TV. Letterman's final show is tonight.
Murray, who...

It's been nearly 20 years since Eddie Vedder first performed on the "Late Show with David Letterman."
When he took the stage in Monday night's episode, the Pearl Jam frontman was emotional as he sang "Better Man" with Paul Shaffer and...

The story of Motown Records is a rich and important one. It's not only the rags-to-riches story of a record label that rose out of inner-city Detroit to become a cornerstone in the foundation of postwar American music, but one in which a body of work...

For 12 rounds, or less, Saturday night, Manny Pacquiao will rely on the guidance of his longtime trainer, Freddie Roach, to figure out how to defeat Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Roach's challenge leading up to the fight in Las Vegas has been to device a plan...

Natalie Prass, "Natalie Prass" (Space Bomb/Columbia). Richmond, Va.,-based Prass' debut album was released four months ago, which may as well be a decade in the scheme of things. I missed it until a few weeks back — a huge, disclosure-worthy...

Three sentences is all it takes for James McMurtry to explain how he comes up with his rich material — the wizened folk stories in "Candyland," "We Can't Make It Here," "Just Us Kids" and others jammed with Red Man chew and...

Tickets are on sale for the big 100th birthday bash in New York honoring Les Paul, guitarist and a pioneer of the modern electric guitar.
The event is to feature performances by rocker Steve Miller, Journey's Neal Schon, blues rocker Joe Bonamassa and...

Frank Sinatra, a singer from Hoboken, N.J., is the subject of "Sinatra: All or Nothing at All," a four-hour documentary airing in two parts Sunday and Monday on HBO. Fair enough.
Among the ranks of male pop singers of the mid-20th century,...

Kath Bloom has been rediscovered a few times already. People keep finding out about her arresting work. But the Connecticut-based singer/songwriter is still perhaps awaiting a little more of the attention and adulation that she receives overseas in places...

Today, Jay Z gave the signal to dozens of music's top artists, asking them to reveal their true colors in a campaign to deliver hidden, coded messages across the airwaves.
No, it's not an Illuminati takeover of pop music. It's the U.S....

Last year, after winning the New England Music Awards, New Haven singer-songwriter Frank Viele started to realize how many people had been cheering him on all along.
"I posted about it on Facebook that we won, and it exploded," Viele said....

There's a reason the vast majority of musical infringement cases in the music world don’t end up in front of a jury.
Count Robin Thicke among those artists who likely wonder what in the world he got himself into after a Los Angeles federal jury ruled...